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Sexualization
(coming soon) Desexualization While feminist scholar's have increasingly focused on the impacts of sexualization and objectification on young girls and women, there are certain intersections of identities which lead to a desexualization. Longing for the Male Gaze - by Jennifer Bartlett "My experiences have been quite different, nearly the opposite, of Ms. Valenti’s and that of most women. I was never hit on or sexually harassed by my professors in college, or later, by my co-workers or superiors. I have not felt as if my male teachers, friends or colleagues thought less of me because of my gender. I’ve never been aggressively “hit on” in a bar, despite the fact that I have frequented them alone throughout the years. In fact, I’ve rarely been approached in a bar at all." After experimenting with hiding her disability (cerebral palsy) on a dating site she notes: "As a pretend, able-bodied woman, I received all kinds of messages. Men wrote stupid things, aggressive things and provocative things. Often, while I was in a dialogue with a man who didn’t know of my impairment, I would disclose it, and almost always, the man vanished, no matter how strong the connection had been beforehand. After a while, I changed the profile to reflect that I have a disability. Fewer men wrote. Sometimes, no men wrote, depending on the content. But over all, the messages changed. They could be called more respectful. The men who wrote primarily wanted to know how my disability affected me. This all feels like a political act, and in some ways it is. Strangely, my disability makes me feel as if I have license to play with and deconstruct sexuality in ways I might not have the bravery to do as an able-bodied woman. I watch men on the street. I will watch a man visually or verbally harass women who pass him. I am invisible enough to do this. Sometimes men look at me, but the reaction is different. There seems to be some level of shame or confusion mixed with the lust in their eyes. Does this mean that I am lucky? Am I blessed to be sexually invisible and given a reprieve from something that has troubled women for centuries?"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/opinion/longing-for-the-male-gaze.html Disabled Women & Sexual Objectification (or the Lack Thereof) - by crippledscholar "Today in The New York Times Opinion pages there was a piece called Longing for the Male Gaze. It is a personal account of a disabled woman’s experiences of not being socially perceived as sexually desirable. I have mixed feelings about the piece. On one hand while it is reasonably well known that disabled people are either viewed as nonsexual by default, there is very little available on the lived experience of not being accepted as an attractive, sexual being. This piece challenges that trend and does so in The New York Times. On the other hand much of the framing of the piece is problematic. It focuses less on being seen as attractive and sexual within interpersonal relationships and more on not being treated as a sexual object. Jennifer Bartlett (the author) focuses on her lack of experiences with cat calling and other forms of sexual harassment. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. For one it gives a lot of social power and validation to harmful social interactions. For another, the author actively plays oppression olympics between sexism/misogyny & ableism. In so doing she fundamentally fails to comprehend the very real harm that can come from catcalling and other forms of sexual harassment. I do understand her frustration with the fact that disabled women are left out of the sexual objectification faced by our nondisabled peers. It is a catch-22 of intersectional oppression that even being denied an oppressive force usually experienced by part of your identity as a result of its intersection with disability is in fact further oppression. That disabled women are often denied sexual objectification only shows how disability has denied us the ability to live up to social and cultural understandings of gender presentation and punishes us by denying us not only the consequences of being sexually objectified but also of simply being seen as fully women. That is a conversation that hasn’t happened enough and needs to. ... That however does not negate the issue of her downplaying the seriousness & real dangers of sexual harassment and catcalling." Undesirable: Toxic Romantic Dreams, Disability, Sexuality and Relationships - by crippledscholar "Her son asked her if he would ever get a girlfriend. A question to me suggests a desire not just for sex but for a relationship, a prolonged romantic experience. Lette’s response was to consider hiring a sex worker which really meets none of those desires even if sex is a desired part of a romantic relationship. Considering hiring sex workers as a solution even in part to the issue of the widespread cultural disinterest and even disgust with the idea of sex and romantic relationships with disabled people is in some ways to accept and fail to challenge those ideas. A sex worker is not going to offer a relationship beyond what is agreed and paid for. Disabled people know this. It is not a comparable substitute for actually being accepted and wanted. I want and deserve meaningful human relationships both simply social and romantic. These are not things I can buy. In order for me to be able to have them. I need people to actually interrogate why disabled people aren’t seen as options for romantic partners. I need more than the platitudes I received from a male friend at 18 when in a moment of bravery I shared my insecurities and the sentiment that no one when I fantasize about an as yet unseen and unmet lover, thinks of someone like me." References Category:Sexuality Category:Sex Category:Culture